


Be Still

by callmecathy



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Close-calls, First Time, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-27
Updated: 2013-08-27
Packaged: 2017-12-24 21:03:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/944618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callmecathy/pseuds/callmecathy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John shrugs, under lamplight and shadows, and Harold's skin aches with want. Possibly need. When exactly those two words became equivalent expressions is a dangerous uncertainty.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Be Still

**Author's Note:**

> For this Kink-Meme [prompt](http://meme-of-interest.dreamwidth.org/1507.html?thread=376803#cmt376803), also listed below.  
> A/N: I really didn't think this needed to be labeled for graphic violence-- but feel free to let me know if you think differently.

"Finch, I left Jacobs with Fusco at the safe house. What about your end?"

Harold taps a key, tabbing across to a new window. "Almost done," He says, surveying the digital records of the altered books Jacobs had attempted to inform the police of. The office is abandoned, monitors powered down; the walls flicker with streetlights and headlights from two floors below. "I'll be down shortly."

"I'll be there in five."

The bar flashes green. "Harrison and his associates--"

"What's left of them," John interrupts, with a lilt that sounds like a smirk.

"Yes, yes, and the  _remainder_   are not going to give up. They'll keep trying to find Mr. Jacobs."

"Just get me a location."

"Bringing one up now." He uses one hand to pull the thumb drive from its port as he runs a GPS track on Harrison. "Oh."

"What's wrong?"

Because of course John can tell that something is wrong from the single syllable, they know every meaning to a hitched breath or an edged word, either given or received across the line: they have to. It's how they stay alive.

"It seems," Harold says, watching the dot converge on his own, "that they're here."

"I'm close--"

Cold, against the side of his neck. He freezes.

"Give me your phone." A man's voice, smooth and pressed as his suit. Harold reaches into his pocket and extends it. "And your ear piece."

Harold shifts in his chair, slowly. Six men, all armed and well-dressed; shadows glance off them as traffic rolls past below. Harrison crushes the ear piece under his foot, lets the phone dangle in one hand.

"Where's your partner?" Harrison asks. "I'd like a word with him. He caused injury to quite a few of my associates today." His knife-- _his knife?--_ glints in the half-light.

Blurred noises are coming from the phone's speaker. Harrison places it on the edge of the table and shifts closer to Harold.

"It's on speaker," Harrison says, toying with the knife. "He can hear you. Call to your partner."

Harold has his fingers clenched tight around the edge of the swivel chair. His eyes flick to the phone, then off.

It's fast, the switchblade flashing and the pain, spiking through his shoulder, warm spread of heat and blood. He's too shocked to cry out.

"Call to him," Harrison tells Harold, "call to your friend," and the blade twists. Harold chokes back a moan. The man closes in, closer than the distance of the blade in his shoulder. Harrison presses the phone into his hand. "I know it hurts." He says, hand settling back onto the handle of the blade. "Call for your partner."

"He doesn't have to." John's voice is barely above a whisper. The men turn in one swift motion and then Reese is _moving_ , except moving is barely the right word, not when he's blurring past the tables with that predator's grace, one hand on a gun and the other reaching for the nearest man, twisting him in front of himself, using him as a shield.

The bullets plow into Harrison's man. John drops him, spinning behind a cabinet. "Down, Finch." John shouts, and Harold dives to the floor.

It hurts.

His elbow slams into the swivel chair a moment before Harrison hits the ground, clawing at his shoulder-- which Harold might put to ironic coincidence, except it's _John_ , so of course it isn't. Harrison still has his gun. He rolls, aiming it as John ducks a blow from another man. Harold latches onto the chair and shoves it forward, over Harrison's hand; he's rewarded with a yell of pain when John's next shots takes Harrison twice in the other shoulder.

Harold knows the second shot is redundant.

The last man darts out of cover, gun arcing up. John turns, not fast enough. The four bullets hit him in the chest.

_Reese--_ except he can't force the word past his throat, and the hard jab of that blade had been _nothing_ , not compared to this; John squeezes off two shots as he falls, behind the line of monitors. "John--" Harold pulls himself to his feet, can barely even feel the pain under the tight raging void of _no_ in his head, scrambles around the tables and drops to his knees. He's sprawled on his side; still. Blood seeps through his shirt. "John? _John_."

He rolls over, coughing. "Relax, Finch. It's just a graze." A grimace as he probes at his ribs. "Good thing I put on a vest this morning."

Harold crumples the excess of John's shirt in his hands. "Good thing they didn't aim for your _head_." He hisses.

"Your shoulder." He says, reaching out, coming away with blood; the knife is gone, must have been jostled out in the fall-- which explains the stabbing lances of pain. "It's not too deep. Messy." He blinks, like a wince.

There are sirens wailing, far-off.

"I called Carter." John comments. "So if anything went wrong, you'd have back-up."

Words like "wrong" are John's euphemisms for "die", "death": because as blunt as the man can be, he has a tendency-- which Harold despises-- to conceal his worth behind passing phrases and trivialities. His hands are fisted in John's shirt and he's _hanging on to him_ , long enough now so it's impossible not to notice.

There's a stirring there in John's eyes, something Harold thinks he already has decoded. But the sirens are still in the air and then John has his hand girded around Harold's arm, angling himself so Harold can barely see the men and the blood on the floor past the other man's figure. He knows what John's doing. He lets him anyway. They leave the office, reach the street.

"Must have lost my keys back there." John says, patting his pockets as they stand under the streetlight. He fishes out a wire-- apparently he carries mangled coat hangers around with him, which is amusing if not alarming-- and presses it against the lock.

Harold sighs and produces a key from his coat. They have copies to each other's cars, to apartments, to safe houses: yet more precautions. Eventually, they won't be enough.

John holds his hand out.

Harold glares at him. "You're not driving. You were shot, Mr. Reese."

"You were stabbed, Mr. Finch."

John shrugs, under lamplight and shadows, and Harold's skin aches with want. Possibly need. When exactly those two words became equivalent expressions is a dangerous uncertainty. "Unless it actually penetrates skin," John continues, "I'm not sure it can be counted as _shot_ \--"

Harold grabs John's coat by the lapels and pulls him close, kisses him hard. And it tastes frantic and desperate and afraid, because in their line of work, maybe fear replaces ardor. And Harold hates that. He really, _really_ hates that. It occurs to him that he's made an uncertain move, which is something he does exactly right next to never-- but it's too late to backpedal now, he can see it in John's eyes: a dozen things clicking into place like a lock, or maybe they're locks being opened. A ragged noise emerges from John's throat. He leans in, winding his arms around Harold's shoulders and waist and pulling him forward, impossibly closer.

When they draw back, John's expression is one that Harold has only ever been able to classify as his "spade for a spade" look: a tilt of the head and half-raised eyebrows. "Okay," John says, resolved, and then kisses him again, draws him deeper, as the fear plows in strong as a riptide-- but it's more than that this time, Harold was right:  it's past want. He knows he needs to stop. He needs to simplify this equation. Except he has loved and learned and lost, and he knows that there is no simplifying this.

The sirens drift through the night and John breaks away, snagging the keys out of Harold's hand on an giddy hitch of a breath, and swings the door open for him. Harold climbs in; his hands are shaking hard enough that he doubts he could drive if he tried.

They park six blocks from the safe house, Harold insists. "Predictability is vulnerability", and he has a clenching, dreadful feeling that he has just began a vulnerability that surpasses all others. _Or perhaps_ , Harold thinks, as John brushes against his uninjured shoulder, _it's been a predictability, all along_.

The first aid kit is within easy reach. John lays out disinfectant and gauze and a needle and a bag rattles as Harold fixes an ice pack; they pull up two chairs and sit in front of each other, knees to knees.

Harold hands John the ice. The graze arcs wide enough to require stitches; Harold runs the needle through the sub-dermal layers, fingers sure and disconcertingly _practiced_ at this point-- he's learned how to do a lot of things since their venture started. He's relearned just as many or more.

John patches up his shoulder, nimble and careful; _more Lidocaine,_ he asks, and Harold shakes his head. They've done this, far too many times. But suddenly every lingering touch that had been passed off as accidental before means infinitely more now: John's fingers brushing against Harold's collarbone as he moves away from his shoulder, Harold's hands flitting along John's side as he deals with the graze, and _what have I done_ is just an voidless little regret that isn't. It should be, and it isn't.

They clean up quietly. John bins the bloody bandages and gauze and Harold slowly, as slowly as he reasonably can, returns the first aid kit to its original state. The kitchen hums with silence.

Harold latches the box, a sharp final snap through the room. He stares at it; John is looking at him: he can feel the graveness of it, the waiting eyes. He wants to latch onto the counter and anchor himself against heavy pulling tides too strong to fight. Wants to keep the night from upending. Because it makes no sense: to love, only to lose; except that makes no sense either, it's the same as saying there's no point in living, just to die. But knowing and logic and reason are nothing, those are data and circuitry, the easy parts. It's John who makes him feel all too alive.

"This is exceedingly inadvisable." He says to the wall.

"Yeah," John agrees, "I figured," and Harold meets his gaze, sees the terrible, terrible acceptance there. John turns and heads towards the bedroom.

He's waiting for Harold in the doorway. And there's that look again, spade for spades, calling his bet; but it's a bad bet, Harold knows that. He knows that, he's a cautious man, and he makes it anyway.

"I'm afraid I'm not at my best today," Harold tells him.

John reaches for him, and he finds himself leaning against him: a habit without a neatly traceable beginning, and one he's not entirely sure he can break.

The bedroom is spare; there are neither calendars on the walls or planners in the drawers. Harold isn't sure he believes in such things anymore. He isn't sure he believes in anything but "now".

He lets one of his hands slide down to tangle around John's, and they pull each other towards the bed.

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Remember the scene in T2 where the T1000 stabs Sarah in the shoulder and tells her "I know this hurts, call to John." Someone does something similiar to Harold, but he won't do it. And then, finally, he tells the bad guy 'I don't have to,' because John is now standing behind him.  
> A/N: Okay, yeah. I admit I completely hijacked this prompt.


End file.
